


Experiment

by ColorTeal



Category: Transformers: Prime
Genre: F/M, Hostage Situations, Injury, Kidnapping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-21
Updated: 2015-04-21
Packaged: 2018-03-25 03:52:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3795718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ColorTeal/pseuds/ColorTeal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Airachnid gets her hands on Cliffjumper.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Experiment

**Author's Note:**

> Too long for Red And Blue (though it'd def fit in there) and this is part of my Cliff Lives AU anyways. This one has been on tumblr for a while, I'm finally crossposting since my poor AU hasn't been updated in too long.

" _Arcee_ ," A voice singsonged, eerie as it bounced off the dark metal walls of the ship. Optimus' voice rang in her head, "No, Arcee! Fall Back!" but in her spark, she couldn't obey the order. She felt dragged by her very core to race forward, even if her head knew she should not have. " _Arcee, can you find him?_ "

The voice laughed lowly, and the noise replicated itself and sounded as if it came from everywhere. The sound was only broken by the clattering of Airachnid moving around on her spindly legs.

Airachnid was in the fight, but in the chaos the Autobots had lost track of her. When the dust cleared, they found her completely missing.

So was Cliffjumper.

* * *

 

“Wh.. Hgh…”

“Now, now. Don’t fret.” Airachnid spoke softly, circling under a Cliffjumper upside-down and suspended by sticky webbing from the ceiling. “I’ll give you something to really panic about soon enough.”

Having his arms constricted and held against his body with no room to transform into weapons, it was a struggle for the one-bot army to keep his cool.

“Decepticon.” He arched a brow. “So, what’s Megatron got in store for me today? If you can tell me. Fair fights are more fun, I guarantee ya.”

And she laughed. Cliffjumper’s false confidence cracked a little.

“Let’s just say Megatron isn’t important.” She smiled, opening her mouth and letting her glossa slide over a sharp tooth. “And I don’t fight fair.”

“So if Lord Buckethead isn’t callin’ the shots,” Airachnid laughed at the nickname. “What’s your plan?”

“Short story? You're bait.”

“Say again?”

Airachnid lowered herself onto her heels, hand on her hip and she continued to smile as she cocked her head to the right. “Don’t worry, after you’re done I’ll shift my focus onto you.”

“Bait for what?” Cliff struggled, web groaning but holding fast.

“You mean who.” Airachnid chuckled,  before a distant echoing howl reached them. “Looks like she’s here. Now we’ll have fun.”

“Arcee.” Cliffjumper realized, staring past Airachnid and struggling harder.

“Now,” Airachnid transformed part-way, lifting herself off the floor into needlelike legs. “time to play. You’ll keep quiet about me, and I’ll eviscerate Arcee.” She backpedaled, up the wall into the shadowy rafters.

“And if I talk?”

“I’ll destroy her slowly.” Airachnid dragged a thin limb across metal, emphasizing her meaning. “Right here, in front of you.”

“I’ll get free. I’ll destroy you. You won’t have t-”

She raised a palm, and let a volley of webbing smack into the Autobot’s face.

“Oops.” Airachnid shrugged. “Don’t worry, I have no plans to kill you, yet.”

“Hrm?” Cliff practically had to yell through the webbing to be heard.

“Curious?” Airachnid paused to listen to more of Arcee’s yells, growing more and more panicked as she apparently struggled to navigate the ship. “I quite like what my murder of Tailgate has done to her over the centuries.”

Cliffjumper froze, processing the information before returning to struggling. He pieced it together; This was the Con he and Bee had saved Arcee from once before. He still remembered how damaged, inside and out the motorcycle was. And how... hard she had turned when he bumped into her some time later. War made everyone hard, but Arcee was something else.

“But it’s reached a tipping point, I’m unsafe on this planet with her. She’s risking her own life to come after me.” Airachnid hissed. More echoing yells. “My time with Arcee is done, but you… Well. It’ll be interesting to see what loss does to you.”

Cliff swung from where he hung, glaring at the copter-con as he heard footsteps come closer. Metal pounding on metal until he saw Arcee finally enter the open corridor that led to his current prison.

She charged in, guns retracted and replaced with blades. “I’ll get you out.” He shook his head, side to side. Arcee froze mid step, realizing and recognizing the webbing and Cliff could do nothing but watch her, watch her frame freeze and lock up in the joints and her optics huge and shaking.

Cliff let out muffled shouts, anything to get her attention, but Arcee only came back to reality after a painful jab from Airachnid pinned her to the floor.

“Ah ah, Arcee.” Airachnid laughed, pinning more limbs to the floor. “While I plan to let your partner live, if you struggle… he won’t be walking out of here.”

“Let him go.” Arcee rasped against the cold floor. “Kill me, but let my partner go. Let Cliff go!”

“Well, that was the plan.” Airachnid said, before following it up with a gentle “tsk tsk”. “You shouldn’t spoil my games so early.”

“Wait… why would you let Cliff go?” Arcee was instantly suspicious. Airachnid wasn’t one to willingly let anyone live.

The ex-Con bound Arcee up with balls of webbing, before masterfully wrapping her up as she had with Cliffjumper but the bike was left to lay on the floor. Satisfied with the bindings, Airachnid let her legs touch the floor again, spider limbs still hovering over her and Arcee both like a cage.

“It was enjoyable to see how broken apart you were over Tailgate. You still are quite… broken.”

Arcee curled up into herself on the floor. She repeatedly tried to force her blades out, as Cliff hung above still struggling for his own weapons.

“I think I’m going to enjoy a repeat performance, just on a different bot. Call it an experiment, see how your precious partner reacts to the loss of you.”

The webbing on Cliffjumper’s face came loose from heavy venting, heat from his struggle helping against the cold air of the spider’s ship.

“Arcee, get up and run!” He yelled, noticing but not caring at Arachnid's disapproval of his interruption. “Just get up and go, now! Roll away, get up, transform and drive just get out!”

Airachnid stepped on Arcee’s wrist, heel holding her in place while one of her longer appendages pierced through the blue Autobot’s hand and elicited a painful scream.

“She will now die slowly.” She announced, voice steady and stern. Airachnid knelt down, feeling the energon bubble out around her to whisper, “You have your pa…”

A silent staring contest, Airachnid’s deep magenta optics stare calmly and curiously into Arcee’s, her vision shaking with panic.

“Arcee,” Cliffjumper struggled harder, shoulder joints groaning from his fight against webbing.

“Oh, Arcee, how could you.” Airachnid cupped Arcee’s face in a slender hand. “I brought death to Tailgate, and he was just a teammate to you. A close teammate, but just a teammate.” Airachnid rose away, fingers trailing across Arcee’s face and the copter took a step towards Cliffjumper.

“Aaaarcee,” The red bot fought harder, non-stop pushing and pulling until he swung gently from where he was trapped.

“Death came to your partners in work, what will happen to your partners in love?” Airachnid used both hands to cup Cliff’s face, fingertips digging painfully into his neck. “Maybe I should kill Cliffjumper today instead of you. I am curious to see what losing a conjux endura would do to you.”

Airachnid watched Cliffjumper’s optics. Staring, cold and defiantly she stared with no backing down. And then she laughed.

“Let her go.” Cliffjumper demanded.

“You reciprocate. So your her’s too.” Airachnid hummed. “I guess I could kill either of you and see the result.”

Cliff looked past Airachnid, he could tell without seeing Arcee’s face that she wasn’t fighting the spider-bot’s bindings. She was near-comatose, as still as death.

Cliff wriggled between strands of web, managing to poke fingers through.

“Here’s a result.” Cliff grinned, feeling his arm finally transform now that it had the room too, and he fired through the webbing. The blaster fire sent him backwards, Airachnid hissed as the shots hit her and she skittered to safety.

“Arcee, get up.” Cliffjumper fought against the swinging best he could, slowing down and firing upward to drop himself to the floor. “Arcee, get up you gotta be the one to cut us free.”

She pulled in, rolling onto sharp knees and pulled roughly at the bonds on her wrists until she could free her weapons. “She’ll be back soon.”

“Quick,” Cliffjumper managed to roll onto his chest, and Arcee set to cutting him free. “I can see why you hate Airachnid. Like, actual hate.”

“She takes anything that might be your weakness and tries to smother you with it.” Arcee huffed as her fellow Autobot was free enough to shrug off what was left of Airachnid’s webs.

“I noticed. She wouldn’t shut up about how my getting captured was such a huge team failure, and that it failed you too.” Cliff pushed himself up, and then extended a dark hand. “And… I’m sorry if it did.”

“We can be sentimental later.” Arcee took his hand, pulled herself up, and then began to drag him through hallways. “When we know we won’t be offlined.”

Arcee was familiar with the sound of Airachnid’s chase, tiny metal toes on metal, leaping through the overhead rafters. She was near-silent, but only near and Arcee was accustomed to her noises.

“Arcee!”

The bike looked over her shoulder, blades retracted for her guns. Airachnid fell into the hallway, energon seeping from wounds.

“I will destroy you both.” She growled, before skittering away.

“No!” Arcee managed to choke out, stress from the situation strangling her. She fired at the copter’s legs, all of them, before firing into the space above to send support rails crashing down.

For the first time in several hours, Cliffjumper was free and in the sunlight again, although this time the sun was setting while the pair darted into the trees.

“Ratchet?” Arcee talked into her comm link. She heard the medic, clear as day. “We’re fine, just bridge us back. Now.”

As soon as he was sure she had disconnected, Cliffjumper had his arms around Arcee, every vent of his slightly lifting her off the dirt.

“You didn’t have to come after me.” He buried his head best he could against Arcee’s blue frame. “I heard Optimus tell you-”

“You don’t have to thank me.” Arcee surrendered to the hug, both mindful of her injured wrist. “Optimus isn’t gonna be happy with me disobeying like that. Again.”

“Even if it worked out?”

“ _Especially_ because it worked out.”

 


End file.
